Of Hope and Despair
by eidolondestroyer
Summary: RK. Three years after her seperation from Sora Kairi has reunited with Riku, but Sora still has not returned. As Kairi mourns her loss Riku attempts to provide her some solace. Told in Riku's POV. Please R&R!


Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts.

            It's interesting, the way the heart works. Even the purest can succumb to darkness, yet even the blackest can return into the light. Love is so easily twisted into hatred, and hatred is so easily metamorphosed into love. The emotions of the heart are never stable, nor will they ever be. And yet, in life there is still that one constant, the one thing that never changes. Something that can be depended upon, so that no matter what, you can always count on it. For some, finding that constant is a difficult thing, for usually that constant is what people call their soul mate, and even eternity might not be long enough to find the one person that you're destined to be with. For me, however, finding that constant was no problem. I have sunk into the lowest depths of the dark abyss, and I have risen to the highest plains of light, and yet through it all there was one thing that never changed. In fact, there was one thing that inspired all of that change. Everything I did, it was all just to give myself a chance in my ultimate goal, the one that will never change or fade from relevance. And yet, through time it has been proven that my goal is unattainable, for the object that I desire most belongs to another, and that other is my best friend.

            That final realization causes me to give a resigned sigh, and I lift my head to behold the very thing I was contemplating. Kairi was sitting down in the sand, tracing images with her fingers in the sand. Just as she would finish drawing the waves would lap up onto the beach and effectively erase whatever she had drew, which for her was fine because she got to draw something new. Of course, she drew the same thing over and over again, just slightly larger or smaller or at a different angle. It was always the exact same star-shaped object. Almost three years have gone by since Sora and Kairi were separated for the last time, and just over one and a half years have passed since I found my way back through the darkness. I lost track of how many days passed since then, but every day the same thing has happened. She just sits in the sand for an hour or two, drawing the paopu fruit. At high tide she goes into the secret place, seeking refuge and isolation from the harsh realities of life, and not wanting to disturb her all I can do is listen as she faintly sobs.

            I hear a faint rustle and my focus returns to the here and now. Kairi picks herself off of the ground before heading away from the beach and towards the secret place. I trail behind her, keeping a respectful distance but staying nearby. I'm not quite sure why I spend the day with her, because all she does is mourn Sora's disappearance. Perhaps I merely want to ease the burden and take some of her pain, or perhaps I'm merely being opportunistic. I don't really know, nor do I really care. All that matters is that my heart, that wretched thing that creates the pain we're forced to live with, has always told me to be with Kairi, and I dare not go against my constant. I once tried letting her be alone, it only took me five minutes before I cracked and came running to her. Naturally she didn't notice me. She just stared into the sand with glassy eyes void of emotion.

            Perhaps it's those eyes that cause me to stay with her. I can remember so vividly the eyes of the Heartless, empty of emotion. No hope or love existed in those eyes, only oblivion. For Kairi to have similar eyes, it causes untold pain to me. It's almost like being stabbed slowly, feeling every ounce of pain but having it prolonged, allowing it to cumulate until it's quite simply unbearable. I can only wonder how Kairi feels.

            Sitting down on a rock nearby Kairi, I watch on as she looks at one of the numerous drawings on the cave walls. Every time I see it I feel like my heart was ruthlessly crushed, and the pain seems to get worse instead of better as time goes on. Normally I would just adjust to seeing such things, but it's the way Kairi's hand roams the drawing and the way tears collect in her eyes as she does so. It just causes me so much pain, but there is nothing I can do about it. I just have to accept the fact that her heart belongs to Sora, and that there will be no possibilities of that changing. For me Kairi is my constant, but her constant is Sora. How can I change that? I quite simply can't, no matter how much I want to.

            I glance over to Kairi again, and I notice that she's stopped running her hand across the drawing. Her hands have curled into fists that push against the wall, and I prepare for the ultimate pain that goes above all others, listening to Kairi cry, knowing that I can do nothing to help her.

            I listen as she cries for several minutes, and the seconds stretch into minutes, the minutes into hours. I spend an eternity listening as Kairi's pain manifests itself in its fullest, creating the tears that fall from her eyes so freely, cascading down with little space between the droplets of water.

            After a while, or perhaps only a matter of seconds really, I am no longer able to bear sitting idly by, listening to Kairi's sorrow. I stand up and then hesitate, unsure of myself. I begin to sit down again but a particularly loud sob fuels me onward, and I walk over to Kairi, who doesn't take notice of my presence. I reach out and grab her shoulder, squeezing it in a reassuring manner. Kairi stops to cry for a second, craning her neck up to see me, and upon realizing who I am she places her head back down and continues crying. I then kneel down and slightly pull at Kairi's shoulder, which I still have in hand, and I encompass her in my arms. She immediately stiffens, but slowly relaxes and continues crying, muffling her sobs into my chest. After the tension is gone I lift a hand and run it through her hair, which has grown to waist-length since Sora disappeared. She lifts her head up again, looking deep into my eyes, and I seem to lose myself looking back into her eyes. Filled with her grief and despair, I seem to enter a trance looking at those eyes, contemplating how to remove that grief and that despair and bring joy back into those eyes that were once brimming with life. It is then that I do something unexpected and rather foolish.

            My head slowly lowers, going closer and closer to hers until I can easily feel her breathing. I turn my head to the side some before finally closing the distance, my lips brushing against hers and then completely enveloping them. At first Kairi becomes alarmed, struggling against me, desperately trying to get free, but for some reason I refuse to grant her that freedom, and for my persistence I am rewarded as her struggling stops before she actually begins to kiss me back, her lips tugging at mine.

            And then in a single moment the perfect scene I had created from my deepest desires was shattered as Kairi jerked backwards and broke the kiss. Panic was evident in her eyes before grief took over, and this grief was worse than the grief I had seen in her before. To her what she had done was an unforgivable crime against Sora and her memories of him, and she quickly ran off, hoping that her tears would allow her to repent for her crimes. I bow my head in shame and the final conclusion becomes readily apparent, taunting me with its truth and reality. My one constant was the one thing I could never have.

            Never would I have Kairi's heart, for it belonged to Sora.

**Author's Note**: Hmmm…I wonder if this was false advertising. On the one hand it was Riku and Kairi, but on the other hand it, well, wasn't. An interesting question that you have the power to answer! No, not in that "you decide" way. This is basically a one-shot. I try to avoid such things, but this one was inevitable. It was all to give me something to write about and overcome writer's block, not to mention help me sort out some of my own emotions, but that's more of a personal problem. Regardless, the two ways I'd continue this are either by demand or if this hasn't done quite done the trick in relieving me of writer's block, that horrible, horrible thing. Odds are the former is the better way to get me to continue, so when I say that you answer it, I mean either tell me to continue and make it 100% Riku/Kairi, or to leave it be at its 50/50 approach. Frankly, I'm not expecting any responses one way or another, so odds are I wasted my time in writing this long-winded author's note. Oh well.


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